


Before the Night

by Shulik



Series: The night is young. [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hale Family Feels, Laura Hale kicks everything's ass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-07
Updated: 2012-10-07
Packaged: 2017-11-15 19:19:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/530787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shulik/pseuds/Shulik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nineteen years old, driving a black Camaro with her baby brother in the passenger seat and both of them wearing leather jackets, both of them with the same shell-shocked, brokenhearted expressions- Laura was sure that any prospective landlord would take one hard look at them and laugh in their faces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before the Night

The last thing that Laura remembered thinking before the police came to her dorm, was the fact that she had forgotten to update the grocery list the night before and that her dorm-mate would probably be pissed when she got back to their suite to find that there was no toilet paper or eggs. 

Laura had been standing in her threadbare robe, the blue one that she had stolen from aunt Jenny- the one that smelled like her and uncle Peter, like the woods back home and the air in Beacon Hills. Aunt Jenny used to drink her coffee outside in the robe, watching the sun come up over the woods. 

The stupid thought that she wasn’t fit for _company_ , that was the first thing through her mind after the cop took off his hat, hands wringing nervously as he asked to step into the room. Her mother, her beautiful mother who had come to California from Tennessee- with her hatboxes and her cases of jewelry that she would put on for dates with their dad, special occasions- she would have disapproved. Jewelry that she'd first allowed Laura to play with and then Anise, little Ani who liked to loop their mother's long string of pearls around her neck and make Derek play with her. Derek, who was the closest in age to her and who never could say no to their baby sister, the human one out of the four of them. Their mother was old South and she had ideas, ideas that Laura had spent her whole life rebelling against but apparently not enough, because beneath the panic and the blunt disbelief was the firm thought that she was 'not dressed for company'. 

The air had tasted like metal from the time that she had woken up, gasping and Laura had been trying to convince herself that it was nothing. She had called home and everyone had been fine. Aunt Jenny had laughed and asked about Laura's date that weekend, had even slyly mentioned that she was perfectly aware of Laura pilfering her old clothes and that she should probably wear that gold dress of hers, the one that Aunt Jenny had bought for her and Uncle Peter's anniversary. Aunt Jenny said it was nothing. Just a bad dream and Laura had believed her, had spent an hour talking about how to best do her hair and laughing about how mysterious Derek had gotten lately, disappearing for hours and coming back even more sullen and silent, reeking of cheap perfume and frustrated hormones. It _had_ to be nothing because Laura had never remembered the air being so thick with the smell of blood on it, the sense of foreboding and loneliness creeping up her spine. 

“No,” Laura had said numbly, watching him as if from very far away. Her senses had felt dulled the whole day and a part of Laura, that small spark within her that said that someday she’d be a leader, an alpha- that part was perfectly aware of what he was going to say. 

“ _Please_ ,” the cop had insisted and from close up, he looked terribly young. 

Vaguely, Laura realized that she must have been his first. The first person he had to talk about death with. She would have felt sorrier for him if she could have felt anything at all. As it was, her ears felt plugged, like she was standing there with cotton stuffed in them and she actually found herself reaching to feel before realizing that she was fine. 

Except, was she? 

“Who’s left?” Laura said, staring at the cop. Her hands were trembling, a long line of fear and adrenaline and something hoarse and wild working its way up her bloodstream. 

It was coming. She could taste it on her tongue. 

“Your brother,” the cop glanced down at his hand, where Laura could see the corner of the crumpled piece of paper sticking out of it. Dully, she thought she’d be able to at least feel the anger- rage at the fact that this idiot clearly couldn’t remember even the _names_ of her family, but she felt nothing. 

“Derek or Michael?” Laura swallowed down the feeling of nausea rolling up her stomach. 

“Derek,” the cop said with a thin note of relief in his voice, looking up at her- “he was at school.”

Oh god, Derek. Derek, who had just turned fourteen and had really entrenched in himself in his brooding poet phase. He slouched around the house with books of offbeat poetry, using his eyebrows to full effect and only last week- Michael had sent her a picture message of Derek wearing a black turtleneck and looking serious and moody into the camera. 

“Anyone else?” the heat was beginning to boil in the tips of her fingers, working its way up her spine. She desperately wanted it to mean anything besides what she was suspecting. 

“Your uncle and father are in intensive care,” the cop began to sound wary, eying Laura with poorly concealed fear as he took a step back. 

A bright flash of pain exploded behind her temples and the last coherent thought that Laura had before the punch of power took her down to her knees was that it was just uncle Peter now out of all the adults now. 

And her apparently. 

 

+

 

Going back to Beacon Hills was a blur of nausea and overwhelmed senses. She tried getting on a train before rushing back out, the overwhelming feeling of hundreds of humans pressing in all around her too much to handle. After throwing up in a rapidly emptied bathroom, Laura rinsed her mouth out with the tap water before peeling her cellphone out of her jacket pocket. 

‘I’m coming,’ she texted to Derek and then hoped that she wouldn’t total the Camaro. It had been an impulse purchase, bought to celebrate her early graduation and she was going to use it partly to bribe their dad into letting her keep it. He would have loved the car. Would have grouched and grumbled but would have eyed it with the same, desperate want that Laura had felt when she had found it. 

Their father was the one who taught them to love cars, who had taken all four of them to races and monster truck rallies. She still hadn’t cried for him. 

Any of them. 

Ani had wrangled a promise out of Laura to go shopping the next time that Laura would have come back home. Ani, as the baby of the family, had always been the one to get her way. The one that could use the puppy dog eyes to cajole any of her older siblings into doing her bidding. 

Now, Laura wouldn’t have to come with her baby sister to a mall and try to act like she wasn’t dying of boredom while Ani crashed around and tried not to act like a newborn gazelle set loose into polite company. 

Laura stared at her reflection in the mirror. If it would have brought Anise back, she would have gladly handcuffed herself to the loudest, busiest store in the mall for the rest of her natural born life. 

 

+

 

The Beacon Hills police station was a place that Laura had gotten plenty of experience with. 

She had been the oldest and possibly, she should have been the one to be setting the example for the other three but as it was, Laura had always been the rebellious one while Michael wouldn’t stop delighting their parents with his grades and his loads of extra-curricular activities. There was only a year’s difference between them and their parents liked to tease that it should have been Laura who had been born later.

She could feel the stares, pity filled and sad- death always brought out the worst in people. It either made them think that they could commiserate, somehow understand what the survivors of tragedies were going through or that in their own way, they needed to be the ones to comfort them. 

Laura was suddenly viciously glad that she had stopped in that rest-stop near Duquesne. She had thrown up, hard shuddering heaves that popped blood vessels in her eyes that healed instantly. When she had walked up to the mirror, dragging the back of her hand across her mouth- she could barely recognize her own reflection. Her usually lustrous dark hair was lank around her head, greasy and speckled with unknown substances. Her pale skin looked practically translucent, stretched too tightly on her skull and the dark circles under her eyes looked like bruises. 

Bruises would have already healed though, Laura thought detachedly, clinically before stripping off her stained t-shirt and tossing it in the garbage. She closed her denim jacket tighter around herself before going into the shop to buy some deodorant, a small bottle of travel shampoo and gum. She couldn’t do anything about most of her hair, but Laura pulled as much as she could of it up into a no-nonsense ponytail that she washed under the sink. She then washed her armpits before applying the deodorant. 

She could smell the aluminum especially strongly right now. Like metal underneath the smell of artificial flowers, it made her gag, needlessly and painfully. 

She couldn’t do much else under the time constraints, but Laura pinched her cheeks and made sure that there were no more suspicious stains on her clothing. She felt empty, scooped out and lost but she was also perfectly aware of what was looming on the horizon. Derek was only fourteen years old and she had just graduated from an arts college. Their whole family was dead and Laura only stumbled once at that thought, still new and unfamiliar, like a stab to her chest but one that she couldn’t afford to let bleed right now. 

She was Laura Hale, she was nineteen and she would need to do everything in her power to keep her brother with her. 

Of that she was sure. 

She could scent Derek almost immediately when she walked past the doors of the station, the same smell of him that had been burned into her senses the moment he had been born. 

Three of them had been born at home, it had only been Ani who had been born in the woods- there had been complications with their mom’s health and they had needed to call in a favour from a local witch. Ani’s birth had blown out the wards on the house and they had needed to move outside. 

Laura ruthlessly supressed the sudden thought of what if that had been the reason why their family hadn’t felt the hunters coming? If the wards on the house had been so messed up that their usual warning systems weren’t in place, then it would have made the hunters’ jobs even _easier_ and god, god- Laura choked down a faint sob as she finally turned the corridor and saw Derek’s familiar form, sitting hunched over in a chair and with a smaller body resting next to him. 

It didn’t matter now. Whether it had been the wards or anything else, nothing mattered right now except for taking care of her baby brother and making sure that uncle Peter stayed alive. 

“Derek,” Laura said and her brother’s head whipped up, eyes growing huge and teary again as he tore towards her. They collided in the middle of the corridor, Derek wrapping into her in one of his usual hugs, the ones that he so rarely let himself indulge in- like an octopus wrapping all of its limbs around her. He still smelled like his old self, like family and home and _pack_ but now- now, with the alpha power strumming through her like a barely contained bolt of lightning- he also felt like he was _hers_. 

“Laura, god-“ Derek choked out before burying his face in her neck, shaking wildly. He had always been sensitive, her baby brother but now, when Laura had come prepared to face tears and pain- he was silent. She stayed wrapped around him, clutching him just as tightly as he was holding on to her but the worry was almost too much. Why was he so silent? 

“Derek?” she stroked his hair, “baby, what _happened_?” 

That old endearment was enough to break a loud, guttural whine out of him. Almost a wail, it was loud enough to stop several of the police officers from where they had all been studiously acting like they weren’t trying to ignore what was unfolding right in front of them. 

Derek kept shaking, like he was about to rattle out of his bones and Laura could do nothing else but hold on and keep touching him, keep scenting him and making sure that he was _unhurt_. Broken-hearted but not hurt. 

At least until she looked down and saw the kid, it must have been him that had been sitting next to Derek- pale skin dotted with moles and bright amber eyes, he stared up at her with a worried little frown between his brows. 

“You’re his Laura, aren’t you?” the kid asked in a surprisingly serious voice. 

Slowly, Laura nodded once at him. 

The kid looked satisfied for a brief moment “that’s good,” he said, “he kept saying your name. Saying that you’d come for him,” before his eyes flickered back to Derek’s shaking form. 

Laura could hardly believe it. “He,” she swallowed, “he _talked_ to you?” 

Derek _willingly_ choosing to talk to somebody outside of the family was unheard of. Derek choosing to confide in a little kid, a stranger, especially after what had just happened to them? 

Laura was tempted to call it a miracle. 

“Thank you,” she said before the kid surprised her yet again before tapping Derek on the side, where he could reach him. 

“Derek?” he pulled at the sleeve of Derek’s t-shirt. “I need to go, but do you want a hug before I do?” he barely finished speaking before Laura could blink and her baby brother was hugging a small, strange child in the middle of a police station. 

He smelled familiar- like cinnamon and cloves and Laura had been about to move forward, try and unwrap Derek from around this kid’s shoulders when the other smell hit her- clover. Like young, sunwarmed clover, still growing in the dirt- _that_ was why he smelled so familiar. 

It was Derek’s underlying scent as well. 

“Stiles!!” Laura could hear a worried male voice calling in the distance and she took a step forward, putting a hand on Derek’s neck and briefly squeezing. Her breaths stopped. Derek was still. He wasn’t shaking anymore. He had his face buried in the crook of the kid’s neck and he was breathing, deep breaths like he would never get enough but he was still. 

He was calm. 

“Stiles!” the male voice turned out to be attached to one of the deputies and he was practically storming onto the scene a moment later, startling to a stop as he saw the scene in front of him. 

“Miss Hale,” he broke off and stepped forward, “I’m so sorry.” 

Laura had to keep moving forward, had to keep breathing and talking- if she didn’t, if she stopped, then she’d never be able to breathe again and too much was riding on this. She nodded back at him, “ thank you, deputy-…?”

“Stilinski,” the man said before nodding over at Derek who was slowly getting to his feet. “That’s my son Stiles,” he sighed, watching as his kid kept babbling something low into Derek’s ear, earnest gaze trained patiently on Derek’s. “I’m sorry, I should have kept a better eye on him. He shouldn’t be bothering you, especially now.” 

“Oh no,” Laura shook her head, “it’s fine.” She bit her lip, “ I think he helped my brother, so you know, thank you. For letting him.” She felt foolish, like she was saying nonsense but it was true. This small boy, this _Stiles_ \- and what a ridiculous name was that, he had somehow managed to calm her brother down when she couldn’t and Laura could feel an old memory trying to burrow closer, her mom’s voice explaining something patiently about smells to her and Michael but that was all buried under the tons of pain and crushing sadness. 

Like a vital book forever lost in the rubble of the Alexandria library, Laura wasn’t sure if she’d ever be able to remember everything their parents had taught them. 

She made a note to remind herself about this, about this small child and his smell of fresh, sweet clover overlaid with cloves and cinnamon. 

 

+

 

That got buried underneath the mountains of paperwork pretty fast though, and in the year that it took her to claim guardianship of her brother and pull out the insurance money- there had been a small moment when she was reminded of the scene back in the police station. A moment when Laura had run into a harried looking Deputy Stilinski at the grocery store, a frail woman that smelled of decay and illness next to him but that had been the week before Laura had found herself driving past the Lahey house. The kids who she used to babysit, rowdy Cam and his sweet-faced brother Isaac. Cam had moved away with his mother and Isaac had stayed behind but it had been so long that Laura had seen the kid and his father in town that apparently even her subconscious knew it. 

Isaac’s pained, muffled whimpering and the smell of his blood coming from beneath his house was nothing that she had been expecting though.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, I'm shulik1 on tumblr. I post snippets from my stories, ramble on about stuff that's bothering me, swear, reblog hip hop quotes, post insights from universes that I've created. 
> 
> Come and talk to me. I love new people. :)


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